With 12:30 left in the game, Lamar freshman guard Keilan Blanks subbed out of the game and never returned.

He was not injured nor sick.

"I got tired of looking at him," coach Pat Knight said following his team's 85-63 defeat Thursday at the Montagne Center. "I told him to go to the locker room."

It's getting to that point for Lamar (2-19, 0-9). Every conference game is another loss with a similar tale; too many turnovers. Thursday, the Cardinals committed 23 leading to 28 Northwestern State (13-6, 7-2) points.

"Our guards are horrendous," Knight said. "We can't even get the ball into play for our offense, but that's been pretty much the case almost every game. We turn the ball over way too much … and it starts with the guards. I would have been better off letting Stan (Brown) bring the ball up and try to score."

Brown was the only bright spot for Lamar. He scored a

career-high 28 points on 13-of-19 shooting with 12 rebounds.

"I feel like we came out hard," Brown said. "But we just got complacent again at halftime. It's like that break just - I don't know, we came out too slow."

Entering the game, the Demons scored the second-most points per game of any college team in the country. Thursday, they shot 49 percent from the field with 52 points in the paint.

Their rapid substitutions led to 63 bench points to seven for the Cards.

With this team sinking deeper and deeper into quicksand, Brown said the goal is to finish eighth in the Southland standings and get the final spot in the conference tournament.

"There's still time to finish," Brown said. "We looked at the standings today and the eighth spot team has two (conference) wins so we're just that close. We got to keep working.